


taco deal

by battleshidge (Amiria_Raven)



Series: author under the influence [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, Lance gets a single mention, SHIDGE, Taco Bell, ft. taco bell and shiro's gentle smile, shiro is on a shitty date and pidge rescues him...sort of, shiropidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 23:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10729533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiria_Raven/pseuds/battleshidge
Summary: With a single action that she was sure would cost her job, Pidge deliberately turned the woman’s glass of water upside down...over her head.Pidge turned to the woman’s date, disregarding the tray of food she’d just laid out, and declared, “I think you should go somewhere else. I may not be able to afford fancy shit like this, but I’ll take you to Taco Bell and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about and ignore her bullshit. Deal?”





	taco deal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miraculousstorytelling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraculousstorytelling/gifts), [lostinwander (flusteredkeith)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flusteredkeith/gifts).



> For Claire, who gave me the prompt, and Justine for being there to kinda help decide which of the two pairings it would be for. <3  
> Based on this prompt: I’m on a really shitty blind date and you got fed up with the asshole I’m with so you dump water on their head and ask to take me on a better date. I totally accept.
> 
> Yes, I wrote this drunk (and while I'm posting it sober, I haven't touched a thing - it's still exactly the same as it was, surprisingly). Hope you enjoy!

 

 

When Pidge saw the gross mistreatment that one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever seen was going through, she nearly tripped.

No, really. She was weaving through the tables, waitressing for the extra cash, when she nearly tripped over the child that shoved their chair back, loudly pronouncing a trip to the bathroom.

Hitching a grin on her face, Pidge apologized for nearly being in the way and skirted around the chair, barely managing to keep the food tray she held aloft in a horizontal position. Inwardly, however, the petite waitress cursed every child and every parent that encouraged them to be so... _entitled._

“Oh, please, _Takashi_ ,” she heard, a sickly sweet voice that immediately put her on edge. That was the tone that she’d always heard in school, when someone was about to ask her to do their homework for something like a measly twenty. _Please._

The voice continued, and against her will, Pidge found her eyes drawn to the source.

“You can’t tell me you lost your arm in the war and then _not_ tell me deets, babe,” the woman scoffed, tossing her hand, and with it, her deep brown hair. “ _How_? If this is even gonna work for a little while, I’ve got to know why you’ve got a fake arm.”

First of all, Pidge knew something about war stories. As her father and brother had been declared missing in action for two years before miraculously being found with a group of other prisoners of war, she might have been almost what you’d call an _expert_ on such affairs. And the way this woman was treating it, with a bored, flippant tone, was _not_ how one should treat possible trauma.

 _Blind date_ , she assumed, biting her lip as she realized the table belonged to the food she held aloft. Or the food belonged to that table–whichever worked.

But this man–he deserved so much better.

At a glance, even with the gentle smile on his face, Pidge could tell that he’d been through hell and back. A shock of white hair tufted from his forehead, but the rest of his hair was well-kempt, a rich, dark black, cropped short in a way entirely reminiscent of the Garrison’s regulations. It was a bit grown out, as if he’d only recently been released from active service, but only a member of a military family would’ve noticed that tiny fact. And then there was the scar–a jagged mark across his nose, just below eye-level. If he’d been conscious when he’d been given that wound, he had probably been face to face with his attacker.

All of that, on top of actually having lost an _arm_ …

Keeping her composure, Pidge politely started to set the table. “And the steak was yours, ma’am?” she asked, with her best behavior, as she started to place the food. The medium rare six ounce steak was, indeed, the brunette’s, and Pidge continued to smile even as the woman complained that the steak was raw without even cutting into it herself, and as the man tried to placate her.

“Sara, please,” he smiled, a gesture that struck Pidge to her _core._ “You asked for medium rare and this steak–”

“I also asked for a _man_ to be set up with, and I only got half that,” the woman snapped, sneering.

Pidge froze in the act of laying their food out before them, staring blankly at the brunette. The other woman was leering at her partner’s arm, distaste etched across her features, and the waitress scowled.

With a single action that she was _sure_ would cost her job, Pidge deliberately turned the woman’s glass of water upside down...over her head.

“What the _hell–”_

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Pidge forced each word through her teeth, “but that’s not how you speak to a veteran of _that_ particular war.”

The glass made a loud _clunk_ against the backdrop of silence that had fallen amidst the woman’s angry stutter and after her initial shriek of surprise.

Pidge may have forgotten the water glass she poured over the woman had contained ice, but she felt little to no remorse over the fact. This bitch, whoever she was, definitely deserved it.

In fact...Pidge turned to the woman’s date, disregarding the tray of food she’d just laid out, and declared, “I think you should go somewhere else. I may not be able to afford fancy shit like this, but I’ll take you to Taco Bell and we can talk about whatever _you_ want to talk about and ignore her bullshit. Deal?”

After a horrifyingly long period of time, where the gorgeous man blankly stared at her before glancing at the woman that was his date, a grin worked its way across his features. It was an expression that moved slowly, but it perfectly accentuated his features.

“Deal,” he said, pushing his chair back. “Should I meet you there?”

After another long moment, in which both women stared blankly at him, Pidge let a smirk crawl across her features.

“See you in ten,” she said over the other woman’s indignant protests, turning to head back to the kitchen. Before she was there, the apron she wore was hanging over her arm, and with a glance she saw the man–whatever his name was, though she remembered the simpering _Takashi_ the other woman had uttered–slipping through the front door.

“I’m going,” she said simply when her coworkers looked at her in shock. Most of them had seen part of her lapse of judgment, but not all of it. And then, as she passed her friend Hunk, she added, “tell me whether I’m fired or not.”

After that, however, she slipped through the doors and made a beeline for her car. Taco Bell was about a three minute drive away from here, and her mysterious–and handsome–date had a head start on her. She didn’t want to make him wait very long. He was _way_ too attractive for that.

In all of her twenty-one years, Pidge had never asked anyone on a date. She’d been asked on one or two but always ignored them, pretending she hadn’t understood. It was easier that way, honestly, when all she wanted to do was pass her classes and get as far ahead as she could. But now...she’d asked a stranger on a date to spite his _horrible_ date, and he’d _accepted._ She didn’t know what ]to do with that information...but Taco Bell called.

And when she entered the establishment, she spotted him immediately.

With a gentle smile that touched her heart, he held out a hand and introduced himself.

“Takashi Shirogane. My friends call me Shiro.”

“Katie Holt,” she answered, silently asking herself why she told him her real first name when she’d always introduced herself as ‘Pidge’. As a late addition, she continued, “though my friends call me Pidge. You can call me whatever you want, though.”

With a wide grin, Shiro motioned for her to go ahead. “It’s my treat, Pidge. Order whatever you want.”

Pidge laughed and asked, “Are you sure? My friend Lance would tell you to choose your words carefully at this point–”

“–I’m sure,” he interrupted her, that wide grin only growing. Warmth pooled in her chest, and Pidge obliged, ordering nearly fourteen dollars worth of Taco Bell and only feeling slightly guilty over it.

He added another sixteen dollars so she felt even less guilty.

As they settled into a booth across from each other, he smiled at her again, and she felt her heart do flip-flops in her chest. Pidge wasn’t entirely sure if this is what it felt like to have _emotions_ , but she was almost willing to bet it was. There was an almost uncomfortable wriggling in her stomach, and a heat that was slowly becoming familiar to her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure. Yet.

“So…” he prompted after a moment, as Pidge idly munched on her cinnamon twists. She peered up at him through her lashes as he asked, “what made you ask me to Taco Bell?”

“Your date was a bitch,” Pidge found herself responding before she could even think better of it, and then she froze, halfway through chewing the very first bite of her chili cheese burrito.

“I-I mean–” she started, trying to make amends even with her mouth full, but her companion just laughed.

Shiro, with his nearly overwhelmingly good looks, overpowered her when he started to laugh.

It wasn’t one of those weak, noncommittal laughs that she had grown accustomed to from customers that just didn’t want to cause a problem. No, it was one of those genuine laughs that touched everyone who had the fortune of hearing it. It was pure, smooth, and entirely blew Pidge’s expectations out of the water.

 _Shit_.

He was fucking perfect, and Pidge would never be able to live this one date down.

“You’re right,” he finally said, smiling at her. His grin, however, became a bit subdued when he continued, “You talked about the war like you knew someone.”

Pidge paused, and then slowly finished the bite she was in the middle of before finally finding the words.

“I did know someone,” she started, and then amended, “I _do_ know someone. Actually, I know _two_ ,” she laughed, awkwardly. After a few moments, in which Shiro waited patiently, she continued, “My father, Sam Holt, and my brother Matt. They were both prisoners of war, and only just came home.”

She didn’t notice the way that her companion startled at the familiarity of the names. Pidge was entirely too focused on the burritos before her, though not because she was engrossed in eating them, as she would have been before this conversation had arisen.

“They told me a few things about the war,” she admitted, ignorant to the way that Shiro’s eyes softened. “They told me about how some people...lost more than others, and the way she was treating you…”

“Thank you,” Shiro’s voice was warm enough to make her look up from her food.

“You’re welcome?” she asked, tentatively.

She watched the way warmth diffused across his features, slowly but surely, as Shiro smiled at her again.

Their conversation devolved into smaller topics, then, but the gentle smile remained.

At the end of their meal, when Shiro smiled and typed his number into her phone even as she did the same in his, Pidge still felt the same thrill of excitement as she had at the start of their “date”. And even as she prepared for bed later that night, she smiled at the text that came in.

_I had a lot of fun tonight. Maybe we should do it again? Are you free Thursday at seven?_

**Author's Note:**

> As always, hit me up at [battleshidge](battleshidge.tumblr.com) or my main at [panda013](panda013.tumblr.com)!


End file.
